Advanced optional rules for turrets in BFG

[Sigoroth]

how about a different take on it - how about fighters needing to kill fighters on a 2:1 ratio? so a wave of 4 fighters attacking a wave of 2 fighter 2 bombers would only have enough to finish off the fighters, and make them actually useful at defending bomber squadrons. the issue here would be making defensive fighter screens very tough to break and dealing with odd numbers, but in the end any change is a balancing act.

OK, so what's to stop them from running a couple of a-boats, bombers or torp salvoes into wave to drop the fighter screen and then send in the fighters to mop up? This'll make it a 1 for 1 basis. Oh, and what happens if he just sends in 1 fighter? The defending fighters don't remove anything? They gain resilience for the turn? What?

[Dark Depths]

Can someone tell me how these ideas enhance the game rather than just complicate things?  At the moment all these ideas are riddled with problems, and no one's really got an issue with the rules as they are.

[skatingtortoise]

ithe issue for me i that the rules as they are dont really reflect the proper use of fighter support (vs other fighters), and it just *might* be possible that with enough random ideas something will come up that fits nicely. im fine with the rules as is, but it doesnt mean we cant throw ideas around and see if we cant come up with something better.

i fully realise that my previous suggestion was full of holes, i dont think its going to lead to anything, but if we dont explore ways to improve the game, how will we ever know if it could be a bit better? naysaying is much easier to do than bringing something new to the table.

another alternative: fighters on CAP are resilient to bombers and AC. this would make them great for defense, and necessary for bomber support. resilient fighters get a +1 bonus. the overall improvement? more decisions to make. how many fighters to mix in? do you throw all your AC on CAP duty?
another interesting idea from another thread, making bombers/AB resilient when accompanied by X amount of fighters.

possible escort improvement: escorts can forego using their turret(s) for their own defense in exchange for giving it all to a capital ship in b2b. so a sword class could add +2 to a cruiser in was next to, but would be defenceless if it were targetted by other AC. result? people might start taking escort squadrons as standard accompaniment to battleships. attacking player has to decide how much AC he wants to devote to distracting the escorts, to improve chances vs capital ship. defending player must decide who the escorts are going to defend, themselves or the capital ship.

[RCgothic]

And you think the next generation of bombers won't improve enough that the F22s would have a hard time? Fighters and bombers have each evolved at the same rate. The existing ratio still has not changed. F-22s would still have a hard time taking down B-1s with its speed and have a hard time finding the B-2s with all its countermeasures. The F-22 has to find the bombers first these days, something not done easily enough.

Whatever improvements fighter tech gets, you can be sure bombers will not be far behind. This is so because the bombers have to survive whatever current dominant fighter can dish out.

The F22 is 44% faster than the B1 without afterburner, and 60% faster on full thrust. It is also far stealthier than the B2. This is hardly surprising, considering it's a newer generation of aircraft (and much much smaller than the B2). The B3 won't come online until at least 2018. Any unescorted group of bombers intercepted by fighters would be obliterated with room to spare. Modern combat doctrine revolves around either not exposing the bombers to risk in the first place, or escorting them.

And Defensive technology does NOT always keep up. It's far easier to destroy than to protect. No amount of armour plating could practically protect a battleship against large bombs dropped from high altitude. No missile defense program could hope to ward off an all out ICBM attack - decoy warheads, evasive manoeuvring, multiple warheads make a shield pointless against all but the smallest scale launches.

So it's neither clear that technology keeps up, nor that fighters can't have higher kill ratios against undefended bombers. But even if I conceded these points, the argument "Historically fighters have not had high kill ratios" is not proof against "In the far future, fighters can have high kill ratios".

Furthermore, you are considering that the fighters must kill every single bomber and therefore individually have a high kill ratio, when in fact the kill ratio is irrellevant so long as the bomber formation is disrupted to such an extent that it ceases to be an effective formation and has to abort, not necessarily through casualties sustained, but due to an impossibility of regrouping into an effective formation and out-of-formation bombers posing no threat to capital ships. So long as the fighters achieve that, they need not kill a single bomber, yet could still be effective at disrupting multiple squadrons.


But WHY are we thinking about modifying fighters? Fighters have an interceptor role, and an escort role. In BFG, they do fine in an interception role, but poorly in an escort role - there's no benefit to escorting assault boats ever, and it's only worth escorting bombers if the target has more than two turrets thanks to a clunky turret suppression that is also under review.

What have the suggestions so far been?

#1. Increase the Kill Ratio of Fighters against assault boats and bombers to at least 2:1.
#2. A Dogfight Mechanic.
#3. An Attrition Mechanic, with limited AC that must be protected.
#4. Do nothing.

Why is increasing the kill ratio far and away the best suggested option? Because option 4 leaves us with a deeply unsatisfying situation, whilst the Dogfight Mechanic and Attrition Mechanic must by their very nature both slow down the game (they have to - there's more to work out), and increase the complexity of the rules (they have to - they're adding a mechanic that doesn't exist).

Conversly, increasing the kill ratio takes no extra game time (simply remove extra markers!), and is a minor modification to an existing mechanic, and still addresses the core issue - provide a strong incentive to escort waves of bombers or assault boats. It's possible that someone could come up with a better idea that addresses this issue, but given how elegant and simple the "Increase the Kill Ratio" option is, I highly doubt it.

[skatingtortoise]

thinking down the line in-game, i foresee the following:

players with an ordnance advantage would still have it, but would have to match the enemy's fighters before adding bombers. in a situation where you were outnumbered in ordnance, id consider going all-fighter to be a sensible course of action unless you could guarantee undefended targets.

in a game with fairly equal ordnance, id have 3 options:
1 go all out bombers - opponent would likely split his 50:50, and gain an advantage. all-bomber waves are vulnerable.
2 go all out fighters - full defence, forcing something of a stalemate. at the very worst, delay the enemy launching until he can get an advantage
3 mix. if i went 50:50 the enemy would have to match the number of fighters, plus 50% to guarantee taking out all my ordnance, and would have 25% of his capacity left over to cause damage.

note: all these are on very general terms, where the enemy has an opportunity to react and intercept. much more likely is  that players will keep more fighters on CAP, anticipating short range bomber assaults.

[RCgothic]

So, going back to the topic in hand, the suggestions made so far (to the best of my understanding) that modify how AC and ships interact are:

+1 turret to all ships, Bombers roll (D6-Casualties due to turrets) attacks.

Bombers roll (D6-2+Modifiers) attacks to a min/max of 0-6, modifiers are: {+1 for crippled, +2 for no turrets, +1 for surviving escort fighters, -1 for ships in BtB}

Turrets roll a D6 each and pick the highest, Bombers roll a D6 plus a D6 for each escorting fighter and pick the highest. Bombers then roll (D6-Difference) attacks.

Turrets may attack all incoming targets, both torps and AC.

Allow Escorts to contribute all their turrets.

Scrap Massed Turrets.

Add fleet defence escorts.

Fighters remove Bombers and Assault Boats from a wave on a 2-1 basis.

Some options are not mutually exclusive, but the various ways of resolving bomber attack runs are, as are the options to enhance or scrap massed turrets. Attack run methods highlighted blue, with the other options highlighted green. I'd also like to suggest this option:

Ships always engage enemy AC they contact with their turrets, but the AC may choose whether or not to attack the ship they contact and therefore remain in play.

I would suggest that (D6-2+Modifiers) is the best bomber attacks system. It largely brings Battleships down to Cruiser level and makes them vulnerable, whilst still giving escorts (and close formations) an extra role. It's also very simple once you get the modifiers memorised, because it's so similar to the current system. I don't believe the other two options do quite as much to rebalance battleships and escorts, and are also either too much dice rolling for not enough benefit, or inelegant by means of modifying every single ship profile.

Of the other options, I'd keep the 2-1 kill ratio of fighters(for incentive to escort Bs and ABs), allow turrets to attack all incoming targets(as large ordnance now actually can overwhelm a target, this very rules-mechanicy choice is no longer required), and allow AC to choose whether or not to attack a ship they come into contact with (If a ship is surrounded by other ships, they'll need this to get through, at the expense of being shot up by turrets).
I'd also scrap massed turrets, because I think the -1 modifier under this system is sufficient protection.

Of the remaining options, escorts contributing all their attacks is mutually exclusive with scrapping turret suppression, and adding fleet defence escorts either requries adding additional ships and does nothing for the majority of escorts, or makes a fairly major way to how escorts and weapons function.

[skatingtortoise]

this makes me wonder why bombers have the variable number of attacks in the first place? for me it adds in an extra set of dice to roll which feels superfluous. would bombers be just as nasty if they each made 1 'lance' attack? ie. hit armour on a 4+ regardless? at the moment (and ignoring turret hits as they would apply to both), 1 bomber vs a lunar would get 1.66 hits on average, resulting in 0.55 damage on average. so 4 bombers would do about 2 damage.
with lance bombers, 4 of them would do on average: 2 damage, up to 4 maximum, compared to the current bombers (highly unlikely) maximum of 16. overall though, this would improve them against battleships, make them wasteful against escorts, and simplify the process. if underpowered could improve to 3+ hit.

of all the other ideas, i like the turrets hitting torps and AC, escorts contributing extra to massed turrets, and 2-1 fighters. id definitely ditch turret suppression in exchange for a boost to fighters.

[horizon]

I think current FAQ & Bomber plus fighter rules are sufficient and easy enough to understand. I would add one thing: only surviving fighters may add the +1.

So far this thread hasn't convinded me on another set of rulings.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

The F22 is 44% faster than the B1 without afterburner, and 60% faster on full thrust. It is also far stealthier than the B2. This is hardly surprising, considering it's a newer generation of aircraft (and much much smaller than the B2). The B3 won't come online until at least 2018. Any unescorted group of bombers intercepted by fighters would be obliterated with room to spare. Modern combat doctrine revolves around either not exposing the bombers to risk in the first place, or escorting them.

The F22 is also going to be using missiles to kill the B1. B1s can still avoid the missiles. It does have a gun. Enough for 5 seconds of sustained fire. So am not going to be surprised it won't be killing a lot.

And again, as you pointed out, F22 is newer so as you said no surprise. Even then, there aren't that many F22 squadrons yet so not surprised when the B3 comes in there still won't be that many. Not with the price tag involved.

Modern combat doctrine is to send the B2s under stealth at night or the B-1s rushing in under the radar. They don't necessarily go in with fighter protection. They can go in with fighter protection assuming the target is heavily protected but then again, the doctrine would be neutralize the air defenses then send the bombers in.

And Defensive technology does NOT always keep up. It's far easier to destroy than to protect. No amount of armour plating could practically protect a battleship against large bombs dropped from high altitude. No missile defense program could hope to ward off an all out ICBM attack - decoy warheads, evasive manoeuvring, multiple warheads make a shield pointless against all but the smallest scale launches.

Yes they do. It's slow at times but they do. Armor plating can't protect a battleship? Focus on carriers and add a lot of AAs while adding armor to protect the more important and vulnerable parts of the ship. The meta shifted not only on the attack but defense. Missile attack? Well, the anti-missile defenses were never really tested so we won't know. Russians supposedly had a good one surrounding Moscow.

So it's neither clear that technology keeps up, nor that fighters can't have higher kill ratios against undefended bombers. But even if I conceded these points, the argument "Historically fighters have not had high kill ratios" is not proof against "In the far future, fighters can have high kill ratios".

Yeah but until you prove otherwise, sorry, evidence points to the contrary.

Furthermore, you are considering that the fighters must kill every single bomber and therefore individually have a high kill ratio, when in fact the kill ratio is irrellevant so long as the bomber formation is disrupted to such an extent that it ceases to be an effective formation and has to abort, not necessarily through casualties sustained, but due to an impossibility of regrouping into an effective formation and out-of-formation bombers posing no threat to capital ships. So long as the fighters achieve that, they need not kill a single bomber, yet could still be effective at disrupting multiple squadrons.

The problem is your claiming that the fighters can kill more than twice their squadron numbers. Nothing in there about disruption. So far the claim has been 1 counter should be able to take out 2 bombers in an unescorted formation. I can understand them taking out 1:1 without fighter protection and with fighter protection this should go down to nil. But I can't see them taking out 2. Bombers have defensive countermeasures. Bombers try to avoid fighters by maneuvering. Bombers have more armor than fighters. You aren't considering those as well.

Conversly, increasing the kill ratio takes no extra game time (simply remove extra markers!), and is a minor modification to an existing mechanic, and still addresses the core issue - provide a strong incentive to escort waves of bombers or assault boats. It's possible that someone could come up with a better idea that addresses this issue, but given how elegant and simple the "Increase the Kill Ratio" option is, I highly doubt it.

I prefer for someone to come up with a better rule. While attrition rules may increase game time, it probably won't increase it too much. It'll be a bit slow at the beginning but once the attrition comes in, things should get simpler in the later turns as there is less to remember. Also, it would introduce new tactical thinking since now, AC squadrons are not infinite. One has to figure out when and how to make the best use of them.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

I would suggest that (D6-2+Modifiers) is the best bomber attacks system. It largely brings Battleships down to Cruiser level and makes them vulnerable, whilst still giving escorts (and close formations) an extra role. It's also very simple once you get the modifiers memorised, because it's so similar to the current system. I don't believe the other two options do quite as much to rebalance battleships and escorts, and are also either too much dice rolling for not enough benefit, or inelegant by means of modifying every single ship profile.

And why should battleships be more vulnerable? As vulnerable as a cruiser anyway. And you want to keep things simple by avoiding attrition rules but you prefer bombers getting all those modifiers so now one has to stop and think about what modifiers come into play as well as figure this on a ship attacked by mutliple bomber counters which isn't crippled when the first bomber counters attack but then crippled before the bomber attack has ended meaning there still are a couple of counters left to attack.  Oh yeah, definitely won't eat up time on the table.

Of the other options, I'd keep the 2-1 kill ratio of fighters(for incentive to escort Bs and ABs),

No, don't agree with this.

allow turrets to attack all incoming targets(as large ordnance now actually can overwhelm a target, this very rules-mechanicy choice is no longer required),

I'm ok with this.

and allow AC to choose whether or not to attack a ship they come into contact with (If a ship is surrounded by other ships, they'll need this to get through, at the expense of being shot up by turrets).

Nope, don't think a change into this is needed if one wants things simple.

[Sigoroth]

Why is increasing the kill ratio far and away the best suggested option? Because option 4 leaves us with a deeply unsatisfying situation, whilst the Dogfight Mechanic and Attrition Mechanic must by their very nature both slow down the game (they have to - there's more to work out), and increase the complexity of the rules (they have to - they're adding a mechanic that doesn't exist).

Conversly, increasing the kill ratio takes no extra game time (simply remove extra markers!), and is a minor modification to an existing mechanic, and still addresses the core issue - provide a strong incentive to escort waves of bombers or assault boats. It's possible that someone could come up with a better idea that addresses this issue, but given how elegant and simple the "Increase the Kill Ratio" option is, I highly doubt it.

A good argument, but you're wrong. It is a poor option. Consider:

You have a fighter on CAP. I have a wave of 2 bombers. If I send in the 2 bombers unescorted then I lose both. If I had an escort, so 1 fighter and 1 bomber, then I get 1 bomber attacking, supposedly giving me incentive to send in an escort. However, I could just send in 1 bomber to remove your fighter, now I can attack with the other bomber. So rather than giving me incentive to send in a fighter escort I simply have incentive to break my bomber waves down and attack your fighters will single bomber markers. Soooo I'm getting superior efficiency by dividing my forces and attacking your fighters with my bombers? Silly.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

I'm thinking for attrition rules limit the carriers to something like:

1. 8 LB carriers
-16 Fighters
-8 mix of Bombers and ABs

2. 6 LB carriers
-12 fighters
-6 mix of Bombers and ABs

3. 4 LB carriers
-8 Fighters
-4 Bombers (or mix of Bombers and ABs for those that have them though it might be unfair for Chaos)

4. 2 LB carriers
-4 Fighters
-2 Bombers (or mix of Bombers and ABs for those that have them though it might be unfair for Chaos)

5. 1 LB carriers
-2 Fighters.

Yes it will be a problem trying to identify which counters are from which carriers so that's what I am figuring out next but the point is, these figures will go down as the game progresses due to losing AC to fighters or turrets as they do not regenerate anyhmore. There will be more fighters as that is the general trend. Marking down which counters get taken out would be simple by just printing out a form with circles or boxes and marking the ones which have been taken out. The problem for me right now is more of identification.

[commander]

I would introduce simple Dogfights rules.
My thoughts sofar:
- fighters attack with 2D6; bombers defend with 1D6.
- fighter marker shoots down another ordnance marker on a 4+ on D6
- bomber marker defend against fighter marker and shoot them down on a 6 on D6
- escorting fighters 'intercept' attacking fighters
- attacker has to decide how many fighters deal with escort and how many are going to attack bombers
- resilient craft save as normal.

[commander]

As for turrets:
I would scrap massed turrets and simply introduce fleet defence turrets (as per AM) as an option for escorts and cruisers (revised cost?) but not heavy/battle/grand cruisers and battleships.

EDIT:
Turrets may fire at any incoming wave of ordnance.